4. FEMA, for instance, brought in mobile homes for emergency housing, promising that those who occupied them would be able to purchase them later on. But the trailers had been brought in from out of state and did not meet California standards, so the state would not permit the federal agency to sell them to Coalingans. In the meantime, even though the city had donated the land for the temporary trailer park, the authorities overseeing the site refused to allow any beautification or improvements. As a result, many moved out in disgust and left the area—some permanently.
5. Even some of those who did receive insurance policy payoffs ended up without the financial ability to rebuild thanks to fast-buck artists or dishonest contractors who took their insurance payments and left town.
6. The city of Coalinga, under its police power and ordinances and during its declaration of municipal emergency, had the authority to condemn and tear down buildings it felt were a hazard to life and property. The exercise of that power, however, was understandably controversial to people whose buildings seemed intact, though grievously damaged, yet were bulldozed within days. In one instance, a jewelry store was flattened to halt the fire from the Coalinga Inn. Though the owners were given some time to remove the stock, they later sued the city on the grounds that thousands of dollars of expensive jewelry items had been crushed in the rubble and sent to the dump. Other merchants were unable to remove possessions, stock, office equipment, records, and valuables before the bulldozers moved in. It was a heartbreaking exercise, but the specter of damaged buildings collapsing on owners engaged in recovering material items haunted the city officials and guided their actions. Meanwhile, the lack of insurance for many of the lost items—as well as for the buildings and business equity—haunted the owners and guided subsequent lawsuits and bankruptcies. The insurers of the jewelry store, for instance, denied coverage for their municipally ordered loss simply because the building was knocked down before it could be consumed by the fire its destruction was supposed to halt!
7. One of the Coalinga homeowners whose insurance claim had been refused hauled the insurance company into court on the grounds that a policy which was labeled “all risk” on the front could not exclude earthquake damage with the small print inside. Eventually, the California court agreed with the earlier State Farm decision, and ruled that the words “all risk” did indeed require payment. That led rapidly to the settlement of many “all risk” policy claims which had been previously denied in Coalinga. Business owners, however, did not have “all risk” endorsements on commercial policies, and therefore could not benefit from the ruling.
Chapter 21
1. Mexico City sits 7,300 feet high in a basin ringed by high volcanic peaks, the erosion of which over thousands of years has deposited many layers of alluvial silts and muds, gravels, sands, and clays into the natural basin which at one time was filled with water and known to the ancient Aztecs as Lake Texcoco. Four hundred years ago, when Hernando Cortez conquered the Aztec empire, the lake was still partially filled, but the Spaniards drained it to gain more land for building. Much of Mexico City sits on the high ground above the shore of the old lake, but the airport and parts of sprawling southeast Mexico City have projected onto the soft muds and clays—significant parts of the city center seated on soft sediments over 7,000 feet thick at some points.
2. These codes would be upgraded immediately after the quake with an emergency interim building code that went into effect on October 18, a code that contained higher seismic safety coefficients than the previous code adopted in 1976. The city’s Public Works Department knew that the standards for the portion of Mexico City which sat over the lake bed would have to be upgraded significantly, and a final revised and much improved code was to be adopted by the end of 1986. Nevertheless, the department suspected that many repairs to large buildings and apartment complexes would be done with noncomplying techniques and standards while the revised codes were being written. Because of the very limited number of inspectors available to monitor the process, new seismic bombs would be locked into weakened concrete columns and beams and inadequately welded steel reinforcing members in many locations—“bombs” which would probably go off the next time the capital city received massive pulses of long-wave seismic energy.
3. Indeed, before leaving for Mexico, Karen McNally was forced to withdraw eight thousand dollars of her own personal savings to finance the trip in the absence of immediate funding from the USGS Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and Engineering Office Chief John Filson. Filson, it seemed, was caught at the end of the fiscal year and could not help. Yet when McNally submitted a request for reimbursement later in fiscal 1986, she was turned down by the internal bureaucratic structure of USGS on the grounds that the expense had actually occurred in fiscal 1985. The National Science Foundation eventually came to her rescue, but the episode was a graphic reminder of how extremely difficult it is to expect global advances in geophysical science with sweeping planetary implications for the well-being of millions of people while restricted to K Mart budgets and bureaucratic hair splitting restraints.
Chapter 22
1. The aftermath of a destructive quake brings a heavy emphasis on returning to “normalcy,” whatever “normalcy” really is. The focus is on rebuilding, not necessarily on rebuilding properly. There were efforts in Charleston to rebuild stronger structures which would have a better chance of weathering another great quake, but the methods used were woefully inadequate in most cases. Long metal bars were installed, for instance, through hundreds of damaged buildings and homes, anchored at upper-floor levels on each end with a circular metal plate (earthquake anchor) through which the screw-threaded bar would be tightened down with a large bolt. The anchors were destined to become as much an architectural feature as an element of earthquake engineering, but their purpose was to prevent walls from undulating out from under floor beams and braces during the wild waving of an earthquake—a phenomenon responsible for collapsing many of the buildings in 1886.
Interesting enough, the design was copied in various places up the eastern seaboard and as far away as California in the decades following 1886. There were, in fact, similar earthquake bars and anchors engineered into the unreinforced masonry buildings built around 1910 in Coalinga, California—the same buildings which collapsed in 1983. And it is true that some of the collapsed buildings in Charleston in 1886 had already been fitted with these ineffective devices. The anchors themselves have proven to be a “chicken soup” solution: They may not help—they may not prevent the floors or the building from collapsing—but they can’t hurt. The major malady, of course, is always going to be seismically vulnerable unreinforced masonry construction.
The anchors, however, were often installed as a cure-all in brick-and-mortar buildings, which had been pieced back together with more brick and questionable lime-filled, sandy mortar. Thus by 1890, Charleston was replete with hundreds of brick-and-mortar buildings with great damage and deep cracks which had been merely “plastered” over externally, and within which the original mortar (which had already turned to sand) remained undisturbed—and incapable of holding anything together. With or without earthquake anchors, another large quake would mean another significant disaster. And so it would remain for at least the next hundred years.
2. A jackhammer had been used in the street nearby the morning of the collapse, but several hours of normal traffic vibrations passed before the wall fell.
3. The advent of a small seismograph network in South Carolina, and the development of the South Carolina Seismic Safety Consortium and later the Eastern United States Seismic Safety Consortium were direct results of their efforts. With Charleston a clear “ground zero” for a great quake, it was a logical place to begin. Whereas Joyce Bagwell has concentrated her efforts on education, Charles Lindbergh has focused on earthquake engineering technology. “The essential problem,” as he puts it, “is that there is not even minimal earthquake engineering technology among our [eastern] communities sufficient to form sensible
seismic risk awareness and safety policy. We need to place top priority on transferring the available excellent technology and experience from the west to satisfy this need at all levels, especially at the grass roots. Technology and community commitment are the two basic keys to even minimal seismic safety in the Eastern U.S.” With minuscule funding, endless energy, and support from the USGS, the efforts of both Bagwell and Lindbergh—and others—began to slowly, painfully push into the margins of public awareness. There were light-years to go, of course, but their efforts had been a start. Still, in all the eastern United States, their efforts constitute the only formal hazard reduction programs. Nothing is being done formally in New York City, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Philadelphia, or a host of other highly vulnerable U.S. metropolitan areas.
Residents of the eastern United States generally do not realize that the major rock formations which make up the entire North American continent are riddled with cracks—faults—even from the Rocky Mountains to the Atlantic coast. The complex tectonics of the mid-Atlantic states, especially in New York City, the vulnerability of Buffalo, New York (where a new Earthquake Research Center was established at the State University of New York under Dr. Robert Kettler), and the inferred and suspected faults beneath Illinois and Pennsylvania and most other eastern states, should provide a clarion warning for easterners to get their act together in terms of earthquake hazard reduction programs.
Yet with the exception of Charleston, South Carolina, and Memphis, Tennessee, there are few, if any, efforts being made east of Denver toward such goals. (There is some evidence of progress. Beginning in 1988, for the first time the basic provisions of the model codes—the Standard Building Code—will specify a basic level of earthquake design criteria for new [not existing] structures. Communities must adopt, use, and enforce such provisions, however, and not all have done so. The step, while hopeful, is merely a beginning.)
4. Not that they haven’t been warned. Scientists have tried for years to tell Memphis city fathers and Shelby County officials what will happen to the area the next time the New Madrid Fault lurches violently. Dr. Arch Johnston of Memphis State University, for one, has worked long and hard for years to establish the Tennessee Earthquake Information Center in Memphis, gaining funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency through the 1977 Earthquake Hazard Reduction Act to start a tiny program of education to teach just this point: that Memphis is in danger. It is information, however, for a population that so far does not seem to want to listen.
5. The Earthquake Hazard Reduction Act of 1977 had envisioned (and provided some funding for) a new type of regional or municipal organization which would spread the word and spur people to action. FEMA had been chosen as lead agency by the bill, and one thing FEMA’s people knew they needed to do from the very first was establish a model “project” in one of the California communities most likely to suffer the next great quake. Such a group would be funded partially by its own state, and partially by the federal government, and would work as a communicator without the power to write or enforce any laws. It would, instead, encourage communities to recognize the reality of their seismic exposure; pass new building codes and get rid of the masonry seismic bombs; educate their people on what to expect and what to do when the ground started shaking; coordinate search, rescue, and recovery capabilities; and get better zoning control of hazardous land areas. Most of all, though, such an organization would try to convince people to accept the bad news of impending earthquakes with the good news and vital knowledge that earthquake damage can be minimized if people and cities prepare in advance.
The logical choice, of course, had been Los Angeles, sitting as it was in the shadow of the Palmdale Bulge and the growing tectonic strain on the Fort Tejon section of the southern San Andreas Fault. Following Kerry Sieh’s findings at Pallett Creek, there was no longer any question of if, merely a question of when. After Dr. Frank Press had stunned President Jimmy Carter on the flight back from the presidential inspection trip to Mount St. Helens in May of 1980 with that news, and after the President had assigned the National Security Council to look into the threat, the report the NSC issued six months later confirmed that Southern California—and our defense facilities there—were in fact at great risk. The overall conclusion was frightening: No level of government was adequately prepared to handle what was coming. Among the things needed, said the NSC, was “a small, dedicated staff in California to concentrate on Earthquake Preparedness.…”
That gave California’s state legislators the nucleus of an idea they needed to construct a program for earthquake hazard reduction—something long discussed in the state but never enacted. Within a few months the California Assembly had written and passed Assembly Bill 2202 (September 1980) which authorized funding of a pilot project—the beginnings of an organization which would tackle the prodigious job of trying to convince California communities, which were obviously at risk, to do something to prepare.
6. Both SCEPP and its counterpart in Oakland, BAREPP, in just a few years have developed effective methods of educating the public on what to do before, during, and after a major earthquake. And, they have pioneered ingenious methods of involving the business community in earthquake preparedness programs. The accomplishments of both groups on minimal funds have been nothing short of amazing. Both are excellent models for the earthquake hazard reduction organizations which should be in operation in the other thirty-eight high-seismic-risk states of the United States.
Chapter 23
1. Lidia Selkregg was the principal investigator on an excellent and comprehensive study of real-time, realistic hazard mitigation (and what should have been done and was not done in Anchorage) entitled “Earthquake Hazard Mitigation: Planning and Policy Implementation: The Alaska Case,” written with six others under a National Science Foundation grant (CEE 8112632) and published in 1984. Selkregg and scores of other scientists and engineers had watched in fascination and frustration during much of this period, but never so intensely as when the Anchorage Municipal Assembly voted against Task Force 9’s recommendations for dealing with the ongoing dangers of Turnagain Heights. That abdication of responsibility came in June of 1967, and immediately thereafter the Assembly began considering applications for new houses and apartments in the slide area itself—while never attempting to stop the beach erosion which had begun the winter of 1965, and which would undermine even the geologically temporary stability of the new Turnagain bluff if allowed to continue.
2. In an editorial shortly after the quake, Bob Atwood’s paper stated: “Alaskans are learning that there are some things worse than the aftershocks that follow an earthquake. Among them are scientists.” (From the Anchorage Daily Times, April 27, 1964, as quoted by Lidia Selkregg in the book cited in above).
3. The publication was prepared by William Spangle and Associates, Inc. of Portola Valley, California, in conjunction with Earth Sciences Associates and others, and issued in 1978 (NSF Grant ENV 76–82756). The quotation here comes from p. B-26. The book is an excellent chronicle of why no more has been done, and of precisely what did and did not occur from an engineering and social point of view following the quake.
It is very instructive to understand the assumptions which people made as they decided later to build new, major structures in the L Street area. The authors point out: “[The developers] apparently assumed that any future losses would be covered by insurance or federal disaster assistance. This rationale was further reinforced by the willingness of local financial institutions to fund construction in the area in spite of federal refusal to insure loans [due to the high-risk classification]. Risk from future earthquakes is largely discounted, in part, because of the feeling that, having had a major earthquake, another one is a long way off. As stated by a zoning officer in the Anchorage planning department: ‘We look at earthquakes here more as a historical incident than as a recurring danger.’
“This view is in sharp contrast to that held by seismologists … that recurrence of earth
quakes is a virtual certainty.”
4. There have been a few sporadic violations of the land use recommendations, including a series of two-story condominiums built on the mud flats adjacent to the site of the former small-boat harbor. In graphic demonstration of how dangerous such a site can be, a small flood in 1986 easily washed away the silt beneath one corner of those condos, and one entire two-story unit fell off its foundation.
5. Through the donation of land at the mouth of Mineral Creek several miles to the west by local businessman Owen Meals and through the use of federal funds and state funds, the entire community was relocated, and the old town razed. But the process was by no means an exercise in sweetness and light and unlimited cooperation. There were great and bitter disagreements over the governmental classification of the entire river delta—and thus the entire townsite—as high-risk, and numerous residents did not want to move. The successful relocation could not have succeeded, in fact, if it had not been done rapidly and with courageous decisions made by a host of people in city, state, and federal governmental positions—as well as community leaders—nor would it have succeeded if people had been allowed to keep their titles to the old lots, as with Turnagain Heights, or if the old town had not been strictly rezoned for recreational use only. It should also be noted that the story of the relocation—the valiant efforts of many, the tears, travail, personal hardships, and financial losses coupled with hope for a new start—has not been fully told as yet, and years hence could easily fill the pages of a gripping historical novel.
6. Henry Coulter, a geologist with the USGS, and Ralph Migliaccio, of the Alaska Department of Geology, probed the underwater slide in the weeks of investigation following the earthquake in an effort to find out how far down the docks and debris (and bodies) had descended toward the bottom of the bay. Migliaccio put on a wet suit one afternoon and went over the end of the dropoff to investigate—emerging shaken and somewhat hysterical a short while later. (“He couldn’t get out of that water fast enough!” according to Coulter). While Migliaccio never described all he had seen, the fact that the slope dropped off into hundreds of feet of deep water had made no small contribution to his reaction.
On Shaky Ground Page 41